Posts tagged with "education":

The massive development planned at the Seward Park Urban Renewal Area (SPURA) was unanimously upheld by the New York City Council Land Use Committee on Thursday, and the Lower East Side might be getting a new school. Or not. City officials won’t decide whether to build the project—part the 1.65 million square foot development at SPURA—for at least another five years, claiming initially that the community did not need a new school. According to City Councilwoman Margaret Chin, the city will set aside 15,000 square feet in the new mixed-use buildings in case a school becomes necessary in the future. The city will also reevaluate the funding available to build it and will keep the potential space available until 2023.

Between Frank Lloyd Wright’s private homes, Louis Sullivan’s original skyscraper, and Henry Hobson Richardson’s asylum, Buffalo, New York has more famous and historically important architecture than most cities in the country. Now Buffalo is working hard to churn out its own starchitects—starting in high school. The new Architecture and Design Academy at the International Preparatory School at Grover celebrated its grand opening this week on Buffalo’s west side. The public school’s Discover Design Program, which commenced in the fall with 20 ninth-graders, aims to “engender architecture and design literacy and academic excellence through rigorous curriculum in an effort to prepare students for higher education.” The Discover Design students will receive a basic liberal arts education and practice in the graphic arts, as well as opportunities for mentoring, internships and summer programs with several architecture groups. Looks like we know where Cooper Union’s class of 2018 is right now.

When Boston's Emerson College chose to open a satellite "campus" for students studying and interning in LA (it's really just one building), the school would have been hard pressed to find a more suitable architect than Thom Mayne. After all, Morphosis has had a string of academic successes of late, including the new 41 Cooper Square in New York and the Cahill Center for Astronomy at Caltech. Indeed, some of the firm's earliest successes were two high schools in Southern California. Now, Curbedalerts us to this latest project, complete with the above rendering. The details are kind of sketchy, though we do know there will be 224 residences in that La Defense-like box with classrooms in the inner blob, which is, like, so Thom Mayne.

The AIA just announced the projects that received the highest marks in this year’s Educational Facility Design Awards, and they’re a diverse class – the 13 winners run the gamut from urban to rural, elementary to university, built to unbuilt.
Deemed “excellent” by the jury, Antoine Predock Architect’s Indian Community School follows a long ridge on a former farm outside Milwaukee, sidestepping historic trees and sporting a roof of overlapping angled planes that blends into the site’s topography. Bohlin Cywinski Jackson’s Visitor Center for the Parks Service in Pennsylvania borrows from its setting to make a plea for environmental consciousness instead: its shingles were cut on-site from old tires found in the streams and woods nearby.
The urban designs may be more constrained by their settings, but they acquit themselves admirably. In Chicago, OWP|P converted Ralph Ellison elementary school into a high school, renovating the original 1926 limestone building and grafting on a modern glass box with a mosaic of glazed windows. Another striking visual comes from Daly Genik Architects: On a long, skinny site sandwiched between two highways in Los Angeles, their industrial-chic Camino Nuevo High School has corrugated metal sides that muffle street sounds while cooling the building at the same time: stylish and smart.
Full list of winners:
“Excellent”:
Indian Community School in Milwaukee, Wisconsin (Antoine Predock Architect, PC)
Yale University Sculpture Building and Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut (Kieran Timberlake)
Environmental Education/Visitor Activity Center, National Park Service, Pennsylvania (Bohlin Cywinski Jackson)
“Merit”:
Francis Parker School, San Diego, California (Lake|Flato Architects)
ASU Polytechnic Academic Complex, Mesa, Arizona (RSP Architects, Ltd. in association with Lake|Flato Architects)
Camino Nuevo High School, Los Angeles, California (Daly Genik)
Canada’s National Ballet School, Toronto, Ontario, Canada (Kuwabara Payne McKenna Blumberg Architects)
“Citation":
Cornell University West Campus Residence Initiative, Ithaca, New York (Kieran Timberlake)
Staples Elementary School, Easton, Connecticut (The S|L|A|M Collaborative)
Ralph Ellison Campus, Chicago, Illinois (OWP|P)
Avon Old Farms Beaston Performing Arts Center, Avon, Connecticut (The S|L|A|M Collaborative)
Modular Zero Energy Classroom, Hawaii (Anderson Anderson Architecture)
Green Dot Animo Leadership High School, Lennox, California (Pugh + Scarpa Architects, Inc.)

We have covered the East Harlem School a few times, once in a studio visit we did with the architect, Peter L. Gluck & Partners (09_05.21.2008), and once in our 2009 favorite sources issue (specifically here). Now construction on the project has been completed and Gluck has sent us some images of the finished product. According to the architect, who also provided construction management services, the school was built for $330 per square foot. Gluck also reports that his firm returned $500,000 to the client in unused contingencies. See what $330 per square foot will get you in Manhattan when your architect is also your CM after the jump.

Last Thursday AN California Editor Sam Lubell (author... ahem... of this post) moderated the first in a series of panels hosted by the AIA/LA called Design Dialogues. The discussion centered around educational design, and panelists included Hraztan Zeitlian of Leo A Daly Architects, John Enright of Griffin Enright Architects, and John Friedman of John Friedman Alice Kimm Architects.
Panelists showed off their ambitious plans for new academic buildings like Zeitlian's LAUSD South Region High School #9 (pictured above), which takes design and planning cues from the nearby LA River and its industrial infrastructure; and Friedman's Claremont McKenna Athletic Center (below), a meticulously organized facility with dramatic open spaces and an eclectic facade that is aiming for a LEED Gold rating. Enright presented his St. Thomas the Apostle School project, which creates a new multipurpose room with a cantilevered "urban porch," providing valuable public urban space in a cramped area.
All three discussed the challenges of working within the often restrictive educational realm. Perhaps the biggest challenge, pointed out Zeitlian, was not only designing an innovative new scheme that addressed its context, but also responding to the thorough review process of the LAUSD. Enright suggested that keeping costs down allowed for a surprising amount of design freedom on his project. At least until the next round of value engineering.